“That turkey looks absolutely wonderful,” Ellie said, and handed me her plate. “Would you help me to a drumstick, George? And don’t spare the stuffing.”
Sadie could be vulnerable, and Sadie could be clumsy, but Sadie could also be very, very brave.
How I loved her.
Lee, Marina, and June went to the de Mohrenschildts’ to see in the new year. I was left to my own lonely devices, but when Sadie called and asked if I’d take her to the New Year’s Eve dance at Jodie’s Bountiful Grange, I hesitated.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, “but this will be better than last year. We’ll
So there we were at eight o’clock, once more dancing beneath sagging nets of balloons. This year’s band was called the Dominoes. They featured a four-man horn section instead of the Dick Dale — style surf guitars that had dominated the previous year’s dance, but they also knew how to lay it down. There were the same two bowls of pink lemonade and ginger ale, one soft and one spiked. There were the same smokers clustered beneath the fire escape in the chill air. But it
Around nine o’clock, during a slow dance, Sadie suddenly screamed and broke away from me. I was sure she’d spotted John Clayton, and my heart jumped into my throat. But that had been a scream of pure happiness, because the two newcomers she had spotted were Mike Coslaw — looking absurdly handsome in a tweed topcoat — and Bobbi Jill Allnut. Sadie ran to them… and tripped over someone’s foot. Mike caught her and swung her around. Bobbi Jill waved to me, a little shyly.
I shook Mike’s hand and kissed Bobbi Jill on the cheek. The disfiguring scar was now a faint pink line. “Doctor says it’ll be all gone by next summer,” she said. “He called me his fastest-healing patient. Thanks to you.”
“I got a part in
“Type-casting,” I said. “Just watch out for flying pies.”
I saw him talking to the band’s lead singer during one of the breaks, and knew perfectly well what was coming. When they got back on the stand, the singer said: “I’ve got a special request. Do we have a George Amberson and Sadie Dunhill in the house? George and Sadie? Come on up here, George and Sadie, outta your seats and onto your feets.”
We walked toward the bandstand through a storm of applause. Sadie was laughing and blushing. She shook her fist at Mike. He grinned. The boy was leaving his face; the man was coming in. A little shyly, but coming. The singer counted off, and the brass section swung into that downbeat I still hear in my dreams.
I held my hands out to her. She shook her head, but began to swing her hips a little just the same.
“Go get him, Miz Sadie!” Bobbi Jill shouted. “Do the thing!”
The crowd joined in.
She gave in and took my hands. We danced.
At midnight, the band played “Auld Lang Syne”—different arrangement from last year, same sweet song — and the balloons came drifting down. All around us, couples were kissing and embracing. We did the same.
“Happy New Year, G—” She pulled back from me, frowning. “What’s wrong?”
I’d had a sudden image of the Texas School Book Depository, an ugly brick square with windows like eyes. This was the year it would become an American icon.
“George?”
“Goose walked over my grave, I guess,” I said. “Happy New Year.”
I went to kiss her, but she held me back for a moment. “It’s almost here, isn’t it? What you came to do.”
“Yes,” I said. “But it’s not tonight. For tonight it’s just us. So kiss me, honey. And dance with me.”
I had two lives in late 1962 and early 1963. The good one was in Jodie, and at the Candlewood in Kileen. The other was in Dallas.
Lee and Marina got back together. Their first stop in Dallas was a dump just around the corner from West Neely. De Mohrenschildt helped them move in. George Bouhe wasn’t in evidence. Neither were any of the other Russian émigrés. Lee had driven them away.
The crumbling redbrick at 604 Elsbeth Street had been divided into four or five apartments bursting with poor folks who worked hard, drank hard, and produced hordes of snot-nosed yelling kids. The place actually made the Oswalds’ Fort Worth domicile look good.
